Published: July 31, 2009 11:28 pm      

Logan’s 13s place 4th at state tournament

Squad falls short of state championship goal

The group that constituted this year’s Logansport’s 13-year-old All-Star team fell short of its annual goal of winning a state championship.

The squad placed fourth at last week’s Babe Ruth Northern State Tournament in St. John. Logan opened the tourney with a loss to South Bend Harris (11-1) before beating Osceola (7-3, 12 innings), Taylor (21-5, 5 innings) and Elwood (7-3) in loser’s bracket play. Logan was then eliminated by Kokomo by a 4-2 decision.

“We played good defense throughout, that’s what kept us in it,” Logan coach Dan Frye said. “And we pitched the ball well.

“We just didn’t hit the ball.”

Frye said the squad’s lone bright spot at the plate was Nito Luna. Other than him, the team was in a collective slump.

“We were one of the top teams in the state. We finished fourth without swinging the bats except for one kid. One kid is not enough,” Frye said.

The fourth-place finish was thus a disappointment.

“Any time this group of kids is not playing for a state championship is upsetting,” Frye said. “Beyond South Bend having a lot more kids to choose from, they’re not ahead of us. I believe every other team was hitting and we weren’t.”

Logan never did fully break out its slump according to its coach.

“We’d show signs of getting out of it, then we’d start popping up a bunch on the infield,” Frye said. “Our timing wasn’t very good. Kokomo had a kid who curveballed us to death in the last game. We didn’t face a pitcher who was overpowering the whole tournament, but they all threw curveballs. Team-wide, except for Nito, we struggled swinging the bats except for a couple games.

“It had us scratching our heads of what to do offensively. I tried to impress on the kids that as hitters you go through those times. We had kids who had good years in league play hitting against 13, 14 and 15 year olds. In the state tournament we went 6-2. So in eight games you only have about 24 at-bats or so apiece, so those 24 at-bats can go by pretty quickly. Unfortunately for us it wasn’t just one guy slumping, it was 12. But it was another learning experience. The guys played hard and came together as a team as far as picking each other up. We had all kinds of chances. I was hoping we’d play long enough to where we’d start swinging the bats like we could.”

Frye said that Clayton Frye, Travis Palmer, Dustin Clements and Luna all had impressive tournaments on the mound. He added the entire team had a smooth transition this summer to the big field from the Cal Ripken League to Babe Ruth.

“I think these kids adjusted well and learned a lot from playing on the big field,” he said. “You look at all the aspects of the game, I was pretty happy with their base running and defense. We saw what we need to work on to get to the next level.”